PLAGIARISM Quote "Is the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement. Unlike cases of forgery, in which the authenticity of the writing, document, or some other kind of object itself is in question, plagiarism is concerned with the issue of false attribution".
Definition provided by: Wikipedia
Now lets say for example that you are writing a piece on a subject that requires a quote or two from a reliable source, if declared like the above quote for example, then it's clearly not stealing someone else's material if you inform the reader of the originating source, and that the quote does not constitute the bulk of your content.
Too many people see it as an opportunity to gain credit or recognition for a well written piece of work, however if that work is just pasted from another source, it amounts to nothing more than theft.
I have to ask, would you steal anything else as easily, or for that matter want someone else to steal from you?
Where is the breakdown in your moral code?
I use two ways to spot someone who is committing obvious plagiarism.
Firstly too many original comments too closely together raises my initial suspicions, and prompts me into a closer inspection, as the work itself can offer clues too, unless the contributor actually thoroughly reads and removes the more obvious mistakes in what they submit as their own.
Secondly Google offers one of (if not the best) and by far the easiest way to find existing content already published.
LASTLY To be fair to any contributor, you should only ever mark content that matches 100% of the search criteria. searching for at least 20 exact matching words in a consecutive string.
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Contributor's Note
When committing plagiarism, do you consider how the original author would feel, and would you do it knowing you could be legally accountable?
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